When he was gone all eyes were fixed on the kindling pyre. The flames
blazed up all round it and above it, the smoke mounted skyward in a thick
column, the crackle and roar of the flames was audible all over the
amphitheater; so deep was the solemn stillness. I shall carry to my last
living hour the vivid recollection of that picture: under the grim gray
sky, framed in by the sable hangings which draped the upper colonnade, and
by the clingy audience, against the yellow sand, that column of sooty
smoke and below it the red glare of the blazing pyre.
CHAPTER XXXVI
ANXIETY
After my seclusion at Baiae, up to the terrible events which I am about to
narrate, by far the most important of my experiences had been my personal
observations of the fights of Palus the Gladiator and what I had heard and
thought about him. Therefore I have narrated those at length and first.
Now I approach the story of my most dreadful miseries.
From my return to Rome my life had gone on much as it had before my master
had compelled me to impersonate Salsonius Salinator and, in so doing, to
resume my natural appearance as I had looked while my genuine self, and
thus, undisguised, to mingle with the associates of my normal early life.
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